I’ve written about 2nd generation Beat poet Michael McClure on this here slate of light before. McClure joined up with Ginsberg and Kerouac when the New Yorkers made their way to San Francisco, setting off a poetry renaissance and a worldwide youth movement upon arrival.
It’s easy to look back at the ’60’s with rainbow-colored glasses, but that’s no excuse to. A lot of wrongheadedness and naivety ran much of the ’60s counterculture off the rails. Of course, a lot of good art, music and ideas came from that time as well.
Sometimes, weird bits of 60’s countercultural expression that still turn up from that time seem just as absurd today as they must have 50 years ago. Here, McClure is interviewed before stopping at a zoo to read poetry to a lion.
Stay Awake!
Joe Nolan
